Disappointingly, BrowserPlus is still only available for Yahoo properties, but developers can test the API locally. The benefit of this is that when the API is released to the public, your application can take advantage of it immediately. Obviously, this is a competitor to Google Gears, right? Well, the developer blog actually takes a different stance. They are somewhat complimentary because BrowserPlus allows you to download services instead of one monolithic platform. One major benefit of being service based is the ability to update and add new services on the fly. No browser restart or page reload is necessary. Obviously, that is very cool. From the developer perspective, it sounds like you could provide live updates to your services.

To give you an idea of whether this dynamic updating works, I downloaded the BrowserPlus software. Yahoo had some very nice prompts for what would happen during the download, the typical save the file and run it prompts. Once I ran the downloaded installer, the Yahoo Service Explorer recognized that the software was installed. Several services were automatically activated.

So what services are available? Currently, the Service Explorer lists 12 new services for you to use:

-DragAndDrop - Support drag and drop of files from the desktop to the browser.

-FileBrowse - Present the user with a file browser dialog.

-FlickrUploader - Provides an interface to the Flickr Authorization and Upload API.

-ImageAlter - a corelet based on ImageMagick to alter images locally and serve them over HTTP.

-InactiveServices - a built-in corelet which allows for the exploration of available inactive services, which may be downloaded and activated.

-IRCClient - a service that allows you to connect to IRC chat servers.

-Log - access plugin logging facilities. The available levels in order of severity are Fatal, Error, Warn, Info, Debug

-Notify - a corelet that interfaces the local notification framework (Growl on OSX or Snarl on Win32) to post end-user notifications.

-PStore - provides a persistent store.

-RubyInterpreter - a service which allows other services to be written in Ruby.

-TextToSpeech - a corelet that interfaces the OS provided text to speech facilities.

Only some of the services are activated by default. The JSONRequest and RubyInterpreter are not initially activated, but attempting to activate the JSONRequest service gave me the option of installing both the JSONRequest and RubyInterpreter services. These were installed, active and ready for testing without even a browser restart. Most of the services are testable directly from the Service Explorer. Disappointingly, the RubyInterpreter was not one of those services. However, a basic test of the JSONRequest against the FriendFeed API did work as expected.

The interesting point to note is that most of the services seem to be enabling front-end development as opposed to a local storage platform. Even the developer blog post made a reference to this idea. The persistent storage service, PStore, provides a basic hashmap interface (get, set, keys and clear) for local storage. For most basic applications that a developer would want to locally serialize, a simple hashmap would probably suffice. Otherwise, the list of services provide a very solid developer foundation.

Thankfully, the platform support is very good. Windows XP and Vista are supported as well as Mac OS X 10.4 and 10.5 (intel only). Surprisingly, Linux has no support at this time. It also supports IE 7 on Windows, FireFox 2 or greater on Windows and the Mac, as well as Safari 3 on the Mac. I am sure that the developer community will be upset by the fact that Linux is not supported, but the BrowserPlus FAQ does mention that "Extending the breadth of platform support in BrowserPlus is a key goal."

The "sneak peek" may only allow BrowserPlus to run on Yahoo properties, but the FAQ states that they are willing to work with early partners. This is very important to anyone planning on launching a service once BrowserPlus is available to the public. However, it sounds like you may change these security settings in order to test the API locally as long as you realize those security settings may be reset at any time.

Overall, Yahoo BrowserPlus looks like a very solid offering. If they want to make a splash, they really need to market this better. There has been very little coverage about the tools even though there are a good number of services. More importantly, this seems like a framework that will be very easy to start with. The code samples provided show how simple it is to get started, and some of the services are very useful. If this is any indication of a "new" Yahoo, I think we are going to like it.

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is a leading source for news, information and resources for the Connected Generation. Mashable reports on the importance of digital innovation and how it empowers and inspires people around the world. Mashable's record 42 million unique visitors worldwide and 21 million social media followers are one of the most influential and engaged online communities. Founded in 2005, Mashable is headquartered in New York City with an office in San Francisco.